Angie Renfro, one of Mondo Fine Art's talented artists, has created beautiful new works perfect for welcoming the Spring season.  These paintings are the latest in her popular bee and nest series.  If you are interested in acquiring either of these pieces, would like more info, or would like to provide feedback, please contact us at info@mondofineart.com or 801-971-6330. Title: Let it all drop Dimensions: 12" x 15" Medium: oil on panel Title: That Much is True Dimensions: 36" x 18" Medium: oil on panel A native Texan, Renfro attended art school in San Francisco.  After receiving a BFA in 2002, she remained in the city to pursue a variety of artistic avenues. The experience she gained from working in various fields of design have had a tremendous influence on her work.  Renfro's paintings are now carried in several galleries across the country. She was named "Artist to Watch" by Southwest Magazine in October 2006 and was a featured artist in the August 2008 edition of American Art Collector. To see all available works by Angie Renfro, click HERE

• French artist Christian Boltanski's piece "No Man's Land" opens this Friday.  The piece was commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory and aims to inspire questions of mortality.  Thirty tons of used clothes, a giant crane and a soundtrack of thousands of human heartbeats fill the drill hall through June 11, 2010.  Read more on NYTimes.com.
• A new contemporary art space, ARTER, opened in Istanbul last weekend.  The space contains 160 works from 87 international and local artists.  ARTER aims to encourage production of contemporary artworks both nationally and internationally, which will in turn provide a platform of visibility for artistic practices, especially in Turkey.  The current show runs through September 18, 2010.  Read more on E-Flux.com.
• Public Art Norway (KORO) is extending a call for artists for pre-qualification for two commissions in "one of Norway's most prominent political contexts."  If you're interested find out more here.
• The Festival of Regions is also looking for artists, specifically site specific or installation pieces.  Read more here.
• Mark Bradford is the featured artist at the Wexner Center through August 15, 2010.  Bradford is known for creating contemporary abstract paintings with many different materials.  Read about his exhibit here, or an interview with the Art Newspaper here.
• MUSEION of modern and contemporary art Bolzano opens two contemporary shows in June.  Gabriel Kuri presents Soft Information in Your Hard Facts and Nico Vascellari presents a monolith bronze cast piece that acts as a resonance chamber for percussion instruments he plays.  For more about the exhibit click here.
• Recently the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art asked the question "Is Photography Over?"    One artist stated that it is crucial to include all imaging technologies under the umbrella of photography, including snapshots from an iPhone to MRI scanning.  A panel discussed if photography is indeed over, or if it is a part of photography that is over.  Read more in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• Contemporary art collector Eli Broad made his first public comment on where he plans to house his collection.  Broad sited downtown L.A. as a prime place for cultural tourism, but also mentioned Santa Monica.  The L.A. Times reports.
• The Art Newspaper reports that the Tate Modern needs to expand its range in contemporary art.  The article states that exhibits "should be based on encounters with the unfamiliar and on exchange and debate."  This exchange with unfamiliar can broaden the outlook of patrons.  Read the full article here.
• Rhizome.com reports on Field Broadcast, an event that takes place May 8-17, 2010.  The event consists of streaming video of over 30 artists working in fields.  This project inserts a "semblance of the natural or the organic into the virtual environment" of a desktop computer.  Read more here.
• Hauser and Worth present the first exhibit devoted exclusively to the drawings of Roni Horn.  Horn's pigment drawings start with two drawings of similar forms, these two drawings are brought together through a process of cutting and pasting to create a new form and identity.  She uses doubling, paired form and repetition to create the identity of a piece.  Read more on ArtKnowledgeNews.com.

• The exhibition Art Always Has Its Consequences considers the "politics of exhibiting" and, includes historic works and new productions, archive material and research documentation, reconstructing and reinterpreting paradigmatic artistic and exhibition positions from the 1950s until today This shows the historical continuity of similar art experiments which question the social role of art.  The show runs from May 8-June 2, 2010.  Read more on E-Flux.com.
• In response to the planned closure of Middlesex Philosophy students have occupied Mansion House on campus.  Middlesex now announces the opening of an experimental and communal space for educational presentations and conversations at the interface between philosophy, theory, activism and art.  E-Flux.com reports.
• Record auction sale of Picasso at Christie's brings in $106 million.  Read more on Guardian.co.uk.
• "You know how everyone's claiming to be an artist these days?" writes HyperAllergic.com's Kyle Chayka; well, apparently so are trees.  Read more here.
• The Guardian.co.uk reports that sound art is permanent.  Susan Philipsz, who works primarily in sound art, has been nominated for the Turner Prize short list.  Read more here.
• Emily Fisher Landau, a collector and philanthropist in New York, pledged over 350 pieces of work valued at $50-75 million to the Whitney Museum of American Art.  The collection includes several major artists including Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol.  NYTimes.com has the complete article.

The BYU Museum of Art in Provo, Utah is currently showing Mirror Mirror: Contemporary Portraits and the Fugitive Self.  The show features international contemporary artists who examine the way we view ourselves and the way we choose to represent ourselves to others.  The works use three different themes: rituals, facades/mirrors/masks, and the real self, to examine individual identities.  Several works also examine how new technologies, such as Facebook, explore new identities.  The show is free and open to the public but closes this weekend (May 8th), so check it out while you can.  For more visit the MoA website. The BYU MoA is also opening a new show tonight,  Thursday May 6, 2010.  As A Rose: Sculpture by Adam Bateman opens in the MoA Sculpture Garden with sculptures created from farm sprinkler components.  The sculptures explore the relationship between Utahans and the desert landscape from Pioneer times when they wanted to make the desert "blossom as a rose" to the present state of conservation and Modernist landscape.  Also opening tonight is Bill Owen's Suburbia, as well as BYU MoA's new Electronic Media Gallery featuring Bill Viola, Vito Acconci, and Seoungho Cho.  Learn more on the MoA website.

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City presents Las Artes de Mexico: From the Collection of the Gilcrease Museum.  The focus is to celebrate the art, history and culture of Mexico featuring art from the ancient Mayans through contemporary art.  This show will run from May 6-September 26, 2010. For more about this show click here.

The UMFA also presents a new semiannual series titled SALT.  SALT 1 runs from May 6-September 26, 2010 and features 31-year-old Adriana Lara, a Mexico City resident who works in a range of formats and media, including videos or sculptures made of ephemeral or unusual materials.  This show represents the "cutting edge" of art being created in Mexico today.  For more visit the UMFA website.

The Springville Art Museum in Springville, Utah is hosting its 86th Annual Spring Salon.  The show displays over 200 works from Utah artists, including Mondo Fine Art's Aaron Bushnell who was awarded a Merit Award for his piece "I Dream of Strawberry Sulfur" (below).  "There are some artists, like Aaron Bushnell, Cory Dangerfield, Brad Aldridge, Bryan Larsen, who have exhibited with us before but have really breakthrough pieces this year, ones that make you stop and say, 'Wow!' ",  says Museum Director Vern Swanson  in this weeks Deseret News article. Other Mondo Fine Art artists in the show include Pilar Pobil and Michael Workman, both named among the Top 100 Most Honored Artists of Utah by the Springville Art Museum.   Head down to Springville to support our local artists  - the show runs through July 3, 2010.  Click here for more on the exhibit.

• California artist Jim Shaw, who attempts to visually explore the dark side of the American psyche, is showing fifteen enormous paintings in the CAPC Musee d'art Contemporain de Bordeaux.  Shaw uses a variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, video, installation and performance to get across his message.  The show, Left Behind, will run from May 7-September 19, 2010.  For more on the show, including performance times, visit E-Flux.com.
• To celebrate it's 10th anniversary the Tate Modern will host No Soul For Sale-A Festival of Independents May 14-16, 2010.  The Tate has invited over 70 innovative and independent art spaces to set up in Turbine Hall.  Check it out on the Tate Modern website.
• Investigations of a Dog, an exhibition including several world renowned contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Bruce Nauman, Paul McCarthy, and Kara Walker, opens next weekend.  The Ellipse Foundation presents over 40 works from artists who "ask themselves questions about the meaning of art making, [and are] spurred by a passionate emotional involvement in the society of humans."  Read more on E-Flux.com.
• "Simply to hang a painting on the wall and say that it's art is dreadful" - Martin Kippenberger.  Paddy Johnson discusses how art needs a "network" in order to truly be art.  Read the full article on ArtFagCity.com.
• Organic materials, such as cockroaches, are being used more frequently to create art.  Artists are going natural, "rummaging through the life sciences in search of materials, ideas, cosmic verities, tragicomic homilies, personal agency, a personal agent, a way to stand out in the crowd."  Read more about artists using chicken bones, sardines or even their own blood on NYTimes.com.
• The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced.  To see more visit ArtForum.com.
• The Art Newspaper interviewed David LaChapelle about his return to fine art.  LaChapelle has become famous for "cutting, acerbic wit and layered symbolism in his celebrity portraiture, fashion and advertising images."  LaChapelle recently fell out of love with fashion photography and switched to fine art photography.  Read the interview here.

• Aaron Bushnell, one of Mondo's artists , was mentioned in the Deseret News in an article about  the Spring Salon at the Springville Museum of Art.  Read the article here. 
• The Flower of May, an exhibit to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the May 1980 Democratic Uprising in Gwangjuhas, been organized by Gwangju Biennale Foundation and Gwangju Museum of Art as a festival, separate from the Biennale.  It will include performance art and panel discussions.  Read more on E-Flux.com.
• The Sharjah Art Foundation is accepting submissions of arts in "media including sculpture, installation, time-based media, artist's books and performance."  The project is to allow artists to create imaginative works without the worry of economic or political restraints.  Read more on E-Flux.com.
• Art Forum's May 2010 edition is now out in print.  Some of the articles highlighted in the edition include a critique on contemporary performance art as well as a preview of summer exhibitions.  Click here for the online edition.
• Platform Garanti, Contemporary Art Center in Istanbul is hosting My City.  The symposium covers Art and Public Space, this month's focus is concerns and ideas about temporary monuments and the value of public squares, new public cultural spaces, unauthorized public interventions and public art biennials.  read more here.
• HyperAllergic.com reports on the Star Wars Modern article regarding the evolution of superheroes.  Read the post here.
• The push to help people realize the value of public art has "been won" in Australia.  Now the question remains: How much is too much?  Read more here. 

• The Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park will celebrate the work of Dale Chihuly with an outdoor sculptural exhibition.  Chihuly and his team worked in collaboration with the Meijer Gardens Horticultural team to celebrate the duality of art and nature.  The show runs through September 30, 2010.  Read more on ArtKnowledgeNews.com.
• The Vienna Secession presents three solo exhibitions of Jiří Kovanda, Francis Upritchard and Anna Artaker.  The show includes 3D and installation works from all three.  The exhibit runs through June 20, 2010.  For more read the article on E-Flux.com. 
• Germain Greer publicly defends Australian painter Sam Leach who won the Wynne Prize earlier this month.  Leach openly admits that the landscape was copied from an image he found on the internet, which caused an uproar of sorts in the art community.  Read more on HyperAllergic.com. 
• Guardian.co.uk offers a little insight into Cubism, the art movement pursued by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and others. 
• Exhibition #3takes place May 11-29, 2010 at the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York.  Boško Blagojević's write up says "the best captions can be moved from one picture to another.  Their traction is timeless."  Blagojević continues on the topic of various conversations of today.  Read more on E-Flux.com.

• Manif d'art 5, the Québec City Biennial, will explore the role of catastrophes in contemporary life May 1-June 13, 2010.  A catastrophe seems to be always looming in the far distance, but is ever present.   Thirty-six artists react to the notion that catastrophe has become the condition of contemporary life.  Read more here.
• Kunstverein Hamburg hosts Daniel Josefsohn May 1-30, 2010.  The show, Everything's Gonna be Alright Mother, highlights Josefsohn's style of photography which blurs the lines between art, design and fashion photography.  Josefsohn typically uses "unusual motifs and unsettling scenes" to show an irony within the subject matter.  For more read the article on E-Flux.com.
• Art For the World (The Expo) opens this weekend in Shanghai and runs through the end of October.  As the major project of the Shanghai World Expo 2010, Art For the World allows 20 international artists to showcase their sculptures on Expo Boulevard.  For more visit E-Flux.com.
• Disasters will reveal the character of an individual; art will help to heal the destruction caused by disasters.  On May 2, New York artists Swoon will unveil Konbit Shelter - a project representing the "cross-cultural expression of compassion and solidarity in the face of adversity" during the earthquake in Haiti.  Read more on HyperAllergic.com.
• A photographer in rural Michigan accidentally stumbled across a plastic skeleton during the 1990s, which led him to a new hobby in 2007.  Francois Robert traded the plastic skeleton for a real set of bones in 2007 and began arranging his new set into "iconic" shapes.  Check out the article, containing a slide show of his series Stop the Violence, here.
• David Zwerner in New York presents two Swedish artists,  Mamma Andersson and Jockum Nordstrom, in Who is Sleeping on my Pillow through June 12, 2010.  The concurrent solo exhibitions accentuate the different styles of two artists who have spent a significant amount of their lives together.  Read more on ArtKnowledgeNews.com.

• Nick Riggle of HyperAllergic.com shares his opinion about street art fans.  Riggle states that some fans over "hype" the works.  This over "hype" creates a disillusionment, both in the artist and the fan, that makes viewers "expect more from an artist than it is reasonable to expect."  Read more on HyperAllergic.com.
• The Ludwig Museum in Budapest presents "The Science of Imagination," a show focusing on science fiction.  Nine artists will take several different mediums to bring together prevalent issues from the 1940s-1980s.  For more visit E-Flux.com.
• Artist Melanie Jackson will show her works which make an analogy between "gallery, greenhouse and laboratory."  The show at the Drawing Room in London opens May 19, 2010.  Check out the details here.
• In Shanghai, China the Rockbund Art Museum presents "Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant da Vincis" which features ambitious inventions by Chinese peasants May 4-July 25, 2010.  The exhibition coincides with the World Expo Shanghai and also examines the theme "Better City, Better Life."  Cai Guo-Qiang serves as both a collector and and artist for this exhibit.   Read more on E-Flux.com.
• The Renaissance Society presents "The Seductiveness of the Interval" May 2-June 27, 2010.  The exhibit presents the work of three Romanian artists.  Read more here.
• The Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center announced the artists for "Greater New York."  Over 60 artists will participate in the show that runs from May23-Oct 18, 2010.  For a complete list of the artists click here.
• Millions of people were able to view a remembrance of Jeanne-Claude's work "The Gate."  The piece was displayed in Central Park in New York City.  Read more about festivities that took place earlier this month at ArtKnowledgeNews.com.
• Franz Erhard Walther will have his first solo exhibit in New York in over 20 years.  The German artist displayed interactive, or participatory art long before the current Marina Abromovic exhibit came into play at the MoMA.  Nearly all of his show dates from 1967-1973.  The exhibition runs through Saturday at Peter Freeman, Inc. in SoHo.  For more about the artist visit NYTimes.com.
• "Et Tu, DuChamp?" a piece by Subodh Gupta has been unveiled.  Visit theArtNewspaper.com for more.